This year’s state elections could shape future for Congress

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Buoyed by a string of electoral victories during President Donald Trump’s first year in office, Democrats will be waging a renewed battle to wrest control of Congress from Republicans this year.

Yet the contests with the greatest long-term consequences for Congress could be elsewhere on the ballot —for governors and state legislators who will shape the boundaries of congressional districts for the decade to come.

Voters in two-thirds of the states will be electing governors to new four-year terms in 2018. Of those, 26 will be vested with the power to approve or reject congressional maps that will be redrawn after the 2020 Census.

Although most of the thousands of state lawmakers responsible for redistricting will be chosen in 2020, a total of 766 will be elected to fouryear terms in nearly two dozen states where they will play a role in approving congressional maps.

Winning a governorship ensures a political party has at least some say in redistricting. Matching a governor with a legislature led by the same party — as Republicans have done in three times as many states as Democrats — gives a party the potential to draw favorable districts that could cement its power for a decade.

This year is “enormously consequential for redistricting,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who tracks redistricting nationwide. “The 2018 elections will in some cases decide — and in the rest of the cases, tee up — who is actually in charge of drawing the lines in 2020.”

During the last redistricting, Republicans who swept into control of numerous governorships and state legislatures in 2010 used their newfound power to draw lines that helped them win and retain majorities in the following years.

An AP analysis published earlier this year found that Republicans won as many as 22 additional U.S. House seats in 2016 over what would have been expected based on their average vote share in congressional districts across the country. That helped provide the GOP with a comfortable majority — instead of a slim one — over Democrats.

While Democrats also have drawn congressional districts to their advantage, the AP’S analysis found nearly three times as many states with Republican-tilted House districts among the two dozen most populated states that determine the vast majority of Congress.

“There is an epidemic of gerrymandering,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who recently took over as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, “and the best way to cure it is to elect some Democratic governors so at least there is a person at the seat of the table.”

A total of 36 governor’s races are on the ballot next year, though two of those are to fill out two-year terms.

The Democratic Governors Association is targeting races in eight states — Colorado, Florida, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that it believes could nearly wipe out the GOP congressional advantage if Democratic governors were able to forge favorable maps.